Dangerous Days Part 12

Doctor Haverford insisted that he could manage that. He stood off, surveying with pride not unmixed with fear its bright enamel, its leather linings, the complicated system of dials and bright levers which filled him with apprehension.

"Delight says I must not drive it," he said. "She is sure I would go too fast, and run into things. She is going to drive for me."

"How is Delight?"

"I wish you could see her, Clayton. She--well, all young girls are lovely, but sometimes I think Delight is lovelier than most. She is much older than I am, in many ways. She looks after me like a mother. But she has humor, too. She has been drawing the most outrageous pictures of me arrested for speeding, and she has warned me most gravely against visiting road houses!"

"But Delight will have to be taught, if she is to run the car."

"The salesman says they will send some one."

"They give one lesson, I believe. That's not enough. I think Graham could show her some things. He drives well."

Flying uptown a little later in Clayton's handsome car, the rector dreamed certain dreams. First his mind went to his parish visiting list, so endless, so never cleaned up, and now about to be made a pleasure instead of a penance. And into his mind, so strangely compounded of worldliness and spirituality, came a further dream--of Delight and Graham Spencer--of ease at last for the girl after the struggle to keep up appearances of a clergyman's family in a wealthy parish.

Money had gradually a.s.sumed an undue importance in his mind. Every Sunday, every service, he dealt in money. He reminded his people of the church debt. He begged for various charities. He tried hard to believe that the money that came in was given to the Lord, but he knew perfectly well that it went to the janitor and the plumber and the organist. He watched the offertory after the sermon, and only too often as he stood waiting, before raising it before the altar, he wondered if the people felt that they had received their money's worth.

He had started life with a dream of service, but although his own st.u.r.dy faith persisted, he had learned the cost of religion in dollars and cents. So, going up town, he wondered if Clayton would increase his church subscription, now that things were well with him.

"After all," he reflected, "war is not an unmixed evil," and outlined a sermon, to be called the Gains of War, and subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form and sold for the benefit of the new altar fund. He instructed Jackson to drive to the parish house instead of to the rectory, so that he might jot down the headings while they were in his mind. They ran like this: Spiritual growth; the n.o.bility of sacrifice; the pursuit of an ideal; the doctrine of thy brother's keeper.

He stopped to speak to Jackson from the pavement.

"I daresay we shall be in frequent difficulties with that new car of ours, Jackson," he said genially. "I may have to ask you to come round and explain some of its mysterious interior to me."

Jackson touched his cap.

"Thank you, sir, I'll be glad to come. But I am leaving Mr. Spencer soon."

"Leaving!"

"Going back to the army, sir."

In the back of his mind the rector had been depending on Jackson, and he felt vaguely irritated.

"I'm sorry to hear it. I'd been counting on you."

"Very sorry, sir. I'm not leaving immediately."

"I sometimes think," observed the rector, still ruffled, "that a man's duty is not always what it appears on the surface. To keep Mr.

Spencer--er--comfortable, while he is doing his magnificent work for the Allies, may be less spectacular, but it is most important."

Jackson smiled, a restrained and slightly cynical smile.

"That's a matter for a man's conscience, isn't it, sir?" he asked. And touching his cap again, moved off. Doctor Haverford felt reproved. Worse than that, he felt justly reproved. He did not touch the Gains of War that afternoon.

In the gymnasium he found Delight, captaining a basket-ball team. In her knickers and middy blouse she looked like a little girl, and he stood watching her as, flushed and excited, she ran round the long room. At last she came over and dropped onto the steps at his feet.

"Well?" she inquired, looking up. "Did you get it?"

"I did, indeed. A beauty, Delight."

"A flivver?"

"Not at all. A very handsome car." He told her the make, and she flushed again with pleasure.

"Joy and rapture!" she said. "Did you warn him I am to drive it?"

"I did. He suggests that Graham give you some lessons."

"Graham!"

"Why not?"

"He'll be bored to insanity. That's all. You--you didn't suggest it, did you, daddy?"

With all her adoration of her father, Delight had long recognized under his real spirituality a certain quality of worldly calculation. That, where it concerned her, it was prompted only by love did not make her acceptance of it easier.

"Certainly not," said the rector, stiffly.

"Graham's changed, you know. He used to be a nice little kid. But he's--I don't know what it is. Spoiled, I suppose."

"He'll steady down, Delight."

She looked up at him with clear, slightly humorous eyes.

"Don't get any queer ideas about Graham Spencer and me, Daddy," she said. "In the first place, I intend to choose my own husband. He's to look as much as possible like you, but a trifle less nose. And in the second place, after I've backed the car into a telegraph pole; and turned it over in a ditch, Graham Spencer is just naturally going to know I am no woman to tie to."

She got up and smiled at him.

"Anyhow, I wouldn't trust him with the communion service," she added, and walking out onto the floor, blew shrilly on her whistle. The rector watched her with growing indignation. These snap judgments of youth!

The easy d.a.m.ning of the young! They left no room for argument. They condemned and walked away, leaving careful plans in ruin behind them.

And Delight, having gone so far, went further. She announced that evening at dinner that she would under no circ.u.mstances be instructed by Graham Spencer. Her mother ventured good-humored remonstrance.

"The way to learn to drive a car," said Delight, "is to get into it and press a few things, and when it starts, keep on going. You've got to work it out for yourself."

And when Clayton, calling up with his usual thoughtfulness that evening, offered Graham as instructor, she refused gratefully but firmly.

"You're a dear to think of it," she said, "and you're a dear to have given Daddy the car. But I'm just naturally going to fight it out in my own way if it takes all winter."

Natalie, gathering her refusal from Clayton's protest, had heaved a sigh of relief. Not that she objected to Delight Haverford. She liked her as much as she liked and understood any young girl, which was very little.

But she did not want Graham to marry. To marry would be to lose him.

And again, watching Clayton's handsome head above his newspaper, she reflected that Graham was all she had.

Nevertheless, Delight received a lesson in driving from Graham, and that within two days.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, finding the mill getting on his nerves, Clayton suggested to Graham what might be the last golf of the autumn and Graham consented cheerfully enough. For one thing, the offices closed at noon, and Anna Klein had gone. He was playing a little game with Anna--a light-hearted matter of a glance now and then caught and held, a touched hand, very casually done, and an admiring comment now and then on her work. And Anna was blossoming like a flower. She sat up late to make fresh white blouses for the office, and rose early to have abundance of time to dress. She had taken to using a touch of rouge, too, although she put it on after she reached the mill, and took it off before she started for home.